Cathal BarryThe Church teaches that Baptism is the basis of the whole Christian life, writes Cathal Barry
The Church teaches that Christ instituted the sacraments of the new law. There are seven: Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, the Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders and Matrimony.
The Catechism states that the seven sacraments “touch all the stages and all the important moments of Christian life”. “They give birth and increase healing and mission to the Christian’s life of faith. There is thus a certain resemblance between the stages of natural life and the stages of the spiritual life,” the document states.
The Sacraments of Christian Initiation – Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist – lay the foundations of every Christian life, according to Church teaching.
Pope Paul VI states in his apostolic constitution Divinae Consortium Naturae: “The sharing in the divine nature given to men through the grace of Christ bears a certain likeness to the origin, development and nourishing of natural life. The faithful are born anew by Baptism, strengthened by the Sacrament of Confirmation, and receive in the Eucharist the food of eternal life. By means of these Sacraments of Christian Initiation, they thus receive in increasing measure the treasures of the divine life and advance toward the perfection of charity.”
Baptism, according to the Church, is the basis of the whole Christian life and the door which gives access to the other sacraments.
Baptism
The Catechism states: “Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission.” This sacrament is called Baptism, according to the Church, after the central rite by which it is carried out.
To baptise means to “plunge” or “immerse”.
The “plunge” into the water, according to Church teaching, “symbolises the catechumen’s burial into Christ’s death, from which he rises up by resurrection with him”.
The Catechism notes that this sacrament is also called “the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit” for it “signifies and actually brings about the birth of water and the Spirit”.
As St Gregory of Nazianzus stated: “Baptism is God’s most beautiful and magnificent gift… We call it gift, grace, anointing, enlightenment, garment of immortality, bath of rebirth, seal and most precious gift. It is called gift because it is conferred on those who bring nothing of their own; grace since it is given even to the guilty; Baptism because sin is buried in the water; anointing for it is priestly and royal as are those who are anointed; enlightenment because it radiates light; clothing since it veils our shame; bath because it washes; and seal as it is our guard and the sign of God’s Lordship.”